Maurizio Mediani puts Russian Bears-Ferrari on pole for 24H BARCELONA

With a lap time of 1:51.046 minutes, Italian driver Maurizio Mediani claimed a last-gasp pole position for the 15th running of the 24H BARCELONA. Mediani is sharing the Russian Bears Motorsport-Ferrari 458 Italia GT3 with Spanish driver Miguel Toril and Russians Boris Rotenberg, Sergey Zlobin and Dmitry Samorukov. As temperatures declined towards the end of the session, Dutch driver Duncan Huisman secured second place and pole in the SP2 class with a time of 1:52.852 minutes in the Las Moras Racing-Renault Mégane Trophy he is sharing with fellow-Dutchmen Luc Braams and Ronald Morien and Portuguese Michael Munemann. The Lapidus Racing McLaren MP4-12C GT3, that topped the time sheets for most of the session, ended up third with the time of 1:53.427 minutes, driven by Tim Mullen, who is sharing driving duties with fellow Brits Phil Quaife and Adam Christodoulou and Dutchman Klaas Hummel.

The Russian Bears Motorsport-Ferrari set the pace early in the session, when Spanish driver Miguel Toril posted a time of 1:53.639 minutes, but a little bit after the first 30 minutes, Tim Mullen moved up into first place with the Lapidus McLaren and remained there for most of the two hours. However, the final 15 minutes provided plenty of action. First, Maurizio Mediani took over first place with a time of 1:53.144 minutes and then managed to improve his own fastest lap time another two times, eventually ending up as the pole-sitter with 1:51.046 minutes, over one second faster than last year’s pole-winning time.

The Car Collection Motorsport-Porsche 997 Cup (Daniel Allemann, Marco Zolin-Meyer, Philipp Schnyder, Dominique Lucas) was the best-placed car from the 997-class in fourth overall. Local team Sunred was fastest in the A3T class with the SEAT Leon Supercopa, driven by Fernando Monje jr., Ferran Monje, Jordi Oriola and Pepe Oriola. The Cor Euser Racing-Lotus Evora GT4 (Hal Prewitt, Jim Briody, Henk van Zoest, Dirk Schulz, Alistar Mackinnon) was fastest in class SP3. Fastest A5 class was the Tischner Motorsport-BMW M3 (Michael Tischner, Matthias Tischner, Ulrich Becker, Marco Schelp), while Dutch team YMOR/Bas Koeten Racing was fastest in A4 with the BMW Z3 M Coupé (Martin van den Berge, Richard Budding, Simon Gras). The Schirra Motoring-MINI JCW (Friedrich von Bohlen, Harald Grohs, Markus Oestreich, Jürgen Nett) was class pace-setter in A2 and the SVDP Racing-BMW 120D (Spencer Vanderpal, Chris Wishart, Wubbe Herlaar, Stefan Puschavez) came out on top in the D1 category.

The race starts tomorrow at 12.00 h. During the weekend, there will be live-timing and track footage at live.24hseries.com and regular Facebook (24HSERIES) and Twitter updates (@24HSERIES, hashtag for the event is #24HBCN). MOTORS TV will be showing a summary of the 24H BARCELONA on Saturday, October 6th, at 21.30 h CET.